Native Instruments iMaschine, £3.99/$4.99

One of the most downright fun things you can do with one of Apple's iDevices, in music making terms at least, is jam out and program drum and percussion loops on the go.

There's endless fun to be had building hip-hop grooves on the bus, creating pounding techno rhythms at your desk on a lunch break or sketching out percussion parts on the way to a band practice. It's when these ideas can be taken further - by transferring them to a DAW or integrating them into a larger setup - that iOS beatmaking comes into its own, though.

Here we bring you a round-up of some of the most useable, innovative and flexible beatmakers in the App Store. From groove sketchpads to classic drum machine emulations, innovative drum synths and more. Starting with...

NI’s iMaschine is less an iOS version of its hardware/software namesake and more a companion app. Native calls it a ‘groove sketchpad’, which is a pretty accurate description.

It features 16 virtual pads, which can be loaded with 25 different kits featuring a total of around 400 samples (with additional kits available as in app purchases). It’s also possible to record one-shot samples using the device’s built-in mic and import WAV samples via iTunes.

There’s a mixer section too, which features two send effect slots that can be loaded with delay, chorus, flanger and filter effects.

Overall, the app is a little light on deep features in itself (though the v1.1 update added a few more), but projects can be ported to the desktop version of Machine, making it a great little tool for playing with ideas for users of the full version.